Jacob's Room eBook

Still there is no need to say what risks a clergyman’s
wife runs when she walks on the moor. Short,
dark, with kindling eyes, a pheasant’s feather
in her hat, Mrs. Jarvis was just the sort of woman
to lose her faith upon the moors—­to confound
her God with the universal that is—­ but
she did not lose her faith, did not leave her husband,
never read her poem through, and went on walking the
moors, looking at the moon behind the elm trees, and
feeling as she sat on the grass high above Scarborough...
Yes, yes, when the lark soars; when the sheep, moving
a step or two onwards, crop the turf, and at the same
time set their bells tinkling; when the breeze first
blows, then dies down, leaving the cheek kissed; when
the ships on the sea below seem to cross each other
and pass on as if drawn by an invisible hand; when
there are distant concussions in the air and phantom
horsemen galloping, ceasing; when the horizon swims
blue, green, emotional—­then Mrs. Jarvis,
heaving a sigh, thinks to herself, “If only
some one could give me... if I could give some one....”
But she does not know what she wants to give, nor who
could give it her.

“Mrs. Flanders stepped out only five minutes
ago, Captain,” said Rebecca. Captain Barfoot
sat him down in the arm-chair to wait. Resting
his elbows on the arms, putting one hand over the other,
sticking his lame leg straight out, and placing the
stick with the rubber ferrule beside it, he sat perfectly
still. There was something rigid about him.
Did he think? Probably the same thoughts again
and again. But were they “nice” thoughts,
interesting thoughts? He was a man with a temper;
tenacious, faithful. Women would have felt, “Here
is law. Here is order. Therefore we must
cherish this man. He is on the Bridge at night,”
and, handing him his cup, or whatever it might be,
would run on to visions of shipwreck and disaster,
in which all the passengers come tumbling from their
cabins, and there is the captain, buttoned in his pea-jacket,
matched with the storm, vanquished by it but by none
other. “Yet I have a soul,” Mrs.
Jarvis would bethink her, as Captain Barfoot suddenly
blew his nose in a great red bandanna handkerchief,
“and it’s the man’s stupidity that’s
the cause of this, and the storm’s my storm as
well as his"... so Mrs. Jarvis would bethink her when
the Captain dropped in to see them and found Herbert
out, and spent two or three hours, almost silent,
sitting in the arm-chair. But Betty Flanders thought
nothing of the kind.

“Oh, Captain,” said Mrs. Flanders, bursting
into the drawing-room, “I had to run after Barker’s
man... I hope Rebecca... I hope Jacob...”

She was very much out of breath, yet not at all upset,
and as she put down the hearth-brush which she had
bought of the oil-man, she said it was hot, flung
the window further open, straightened a cover, picked
up a book, as if she were very confident, very fond
of the Captain, and a great many years younger than
he was. Indeed, in her blue apron she did not
look more than thirty-five. He was well over fifty.